Paris, collection of Gédéon Alexis Quatresolz de La Hante (1767-1837; painting dealer). This provenance is signaled by an old label pasted on a stretcher. As a dealer, Quatresolz de la Hante imported French paintings into England in the early nineteenth century.

London, collection of Sir John Charles Robinson (1824-1913; curator and collector); sold to Sir Frederick Cook in 1872.

This gentle and moving image was long attributed to Antoine Watteau; once a treasure of the celebrated Cook Collection, the painting was praised as “of singular beauty and distinguished by an intimate pathos.” Painted around 1720, The Duet likely predates Watteau’s death and stands at the start of the career of Nicolas Lancret, Watteau’s most talented and original acolyte; with its creamy brushwork and sensitive luminosity, it can be recognized as one of the artist’s most pleasing confections.
Although its debt to the master is pronounced, The Duet is a rare candlelit scene from the circle of Watteau. In fact, only one painting by Watteau himself is set to candlelight, the famous Love in the Italian Theatre (c. 1718; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin). In The Duet, a young man and woman study a musical manuscript that is illuminated by the light of a single taper. Absorbed in their singing, their figures drawn close to each other, the boy’s left hand, holding the candlestick, engages the woman’s exposed right arm in a gesture of tender affection. This type of nocturnal genre scene was a specialty of 17th-century Dutch painters such as Gerrit Dou and Gottfried Schalken, whose works were widely collected in France throughout the 18th century, and contemporary French painters including Jean Raoux and Jean-Baptiste Santerre supplied nocturnal subjects in the Dutch manner to satisfy the popular demand. Indeed, the taste for this type of picture was promoted by Watteau’s friend and supporter, Edme François Gersaint, and actively marketed by the art dealer Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, who himself would at one time own the present painting.
Although the correct attribution of The Duet was eventually forgotten, and from the 19th century onward it was given to the more famous Watteau, the painting was recognized as a superior example of Lancret’s art when it appeared in the Verrier Sale in 1776 and was copied in a marginal illustration by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin in his copy of the catalogue. In a rare editorial commentary, Saint-Aubin noted beside his sketch that Lancret’s original was “très beau.” "
The painting sold for $81,250.

EXHIBITIONS

London, Guildhall, Painters of the French School (1898), cat. 53 (as by Watteau, The Duet, lent by Sir Francis Cook, Bart.).

This painting has enjoyed a curious critical history. Throughout the eighteenth century it was rightly recognized to be by one of Watteau’s most inventive followers, Nicolas Lancret. But in the early nineteenth century, after it had been taken to England, it was ascribed to Watteau himself, and in that guise entered the distinguished collections of Sir Joseph C. Robinson and Sir Frederick Cooke. It was praised in the London Times “as a genuine work by Watteau . . . fine in quality” (June 6, 1898). The noted critic and Watteau expert Claude Philips declared it “Of singular beauty, and distinguished by an intimate pathos.” But whereas Philips thought “the woman’s face and the hands of both personnages are . . . equivalent to a signature,” he was also aware that other critics were questioning the attribution. In 1898, for example, Lady Dilke vigorously denied Watteau’s authorship. In 1912, Zimmerman was equally negative; he found that neither the rendering of the man nor the whole of the ensemble seemed typical of Watteau’s work.

The tide of opinion turned considerably after World War I when Wildenstein included the painting in his catalogue raisonné of Lancret’s works and pointed out that the painting has been sold as a Lancret several times over in the eighteenth century. Remarkably, this was the first time since the French Revolution that Lancret’s name was associated with the painting. Réau did not include the picture in his catalogue of Watteau’s work. Although Adhémar also rejected the attribution to Watteau and classified it under Lancret’s name, she nonetheless thought it might be by Jean Raoux or Jean-Baptiste Santerre. When the painting was sold from the Cook Trust in 1958, it was cautiously listed as “Attributed to Nicolas Lancret.” When auctioned in 1997 and again in 2016, the attribution to Lancret was proposed without hesitation. Indeed, there can no longer be any doubt that this painting is his: authorship by Lancret was well attested in the eighteenth century and it closely resembles Lancret’s established oeuvre.

That the false attribution to Watteau managed to stand for most of the nineteenth century serves as a forceful reminder that much of nineteenth-century criticism is unreliable. Many paintings by Pater and Lancret were accepted as genuine works by Watteau, just as many copies after the master’s works were accepted as originals. In turn, these works justified the acceptance of still weaker examples. In short, it was a self-perpetuating system that led critics ever further from the central core.

Ultimately, Lancret’s tenebristic scene depends heavily on the innovations of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, but as reinterpreted in a minor key by more subdued late seventeenth-century genre painters such as Gerrit Dou (1613-1676) and Gottfried Schalcken (1643-1716). French eighteenth-century genre painters such as Jean Raoux (1677-1734) and Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1651-1717) made this type of subject their specialty, creating still more intimate scenes. But this was not a genre that attracted Lancret or other artists in the Watteau circle. In fact, no other candlelight scenes by Lancret are known. Why on this occasion did he turn to this typology? Was he possibly commissioned to paint a pendant to another such work, perhaps by an older master?

Curiously, when the picture came up for sale in the eighteenth century it was generally misinterpreted as showing a woman reading a letter—a not uncommon theme in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art. However, the catalogue of the 1786 Mesnard sale more correctly interpreted the scene as one of singing. The horizontal format of the pages that the woman holds indicates it is a musical part book; her slightly parted lips indicate that as well. In recent times the title of the picture has shifted back and forth between reading and singing, seemingly without consideration of the subject.

A word should be said about the present condition of the painting. Whether through rubbing of the surface or overzealous cleaning, the young man’s face has been damaged. The placement of his eyes evidently changed during the course of execution but now both states are visible, giving him an unfortunate third eye. But if nothing else, the revelation of this pentimento reinforces the notion that this picture was executed by Lancret himself.